Her family honors her memory by encouraging pediatric organ donation and blood sugar testing for children and adults, and by creating a foundation with money from a GoFundMe account.
A family from Alexandria, Virginia, faces their first Christmas without their 12-year-old daughter, whom they called an old soul with an infectious personality.
Beth and John Bachmore and their three sons – Jack, Sam and Ben – mourn the loss of the family’s youngest child, Abigail Catherine Bachmore. She was, of course, known as Abbie. She died of acute diabetic ketoacidosis early this year.
Her family honors her memory by encouraging pediatric organ donation and blood sugar testing for children and adults, and by creating a foundation with money from a GoFundMe account.
Beth and John Bachmore and their three sons – Jack, Sam and Ben – mourn the loss of the family’s youngest child, Abigail Catherine Bachmore. (Courtesy of the Bachmore family)
Signs of type 1 diabetes are sometimes noticed during the preteen years. Abbie was almost 12 and a half years old, and unbeknownst to her and her family, she had had type 1 diabetes for months. Diabetes didn’t run in the family and no one knows how she got it.
In early February, Abbie wasn’t feeling well, so her mother took her to the hospital.
“She was fine when I left for work in the morning,” Beth Bachmore told WTOP. “I came home and took her to the hospital and didn’t go home with her.”
By then, the undiagnosed diabetes had done too much damage. Abbie was kept alive, so her organs were viable if her parents agreed to donate them. When organ donation professionals asked, Beth and John Bachmore were quick to say yes.
“It gives me and John peace of mind knowing she’s still helping other people live their lives here,” Beth Bachmore said.
She wants children to have regular blood sugar tests so their doctors can see if they are developing diabetes. “Why not just take the little machine out and poop, poke it and then put it in the machine and then check the blood sugar very quickly?”
She also wants parents whose child has died to consider donating their child’s organs so that others can live.
“If there’s one bright spot, it’s the fact that (Abbie) could help people,” Beth Bachmore said.
Abbie lives on because of the four people who received her organs, including a father in his thirties who received one of Abbie’s kidneys; a woman in her twenties who was very ill and had Abbie’s other kidney; a woman in her sixties who got both lungs from Abbie; and a teenage boy who got Abbie’s liver.
You can learn more about Abbie Bachmore and the foundation that honors her on her webpage. You can also read Beth Bachmore’s tribute to her daughter online.
Finally, learn more about organ donation — and sign up as a donor — on the National Donate Life Registry website.
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